Nxt

[YorkNecromancer]

Any wrasslin' fans here catch the latest NXT PPV?

I've basically sworn off watching any WWE until Vince MacMahon is dead and the booking can improve, but man. I watched the latest NXT PPV, and it's one of the single best wrestling events I've seen since Wrestlemania X7.

Cogent booking, superb workrate, logical-plotted characters and angles... The thing was basically excellent from start to finish.

Any other NXT fans about?

[Mr Mystery]

I've got the WWE Network, and I am greatly enjoying NXT.

I don't think the plots are much less daft than WWE, but the stripped down feel and smaller audience really work, as does the lack of ridiculous (but thoroughly entertaining) commentary.

[YorkNecromancer]

but the stripped down feel and smaller audience really work, as does the lack of ridiculous (but thoroughly entertaining) commentary.

I know! It's like, by having the smaller audience, somehow it makes the whole thing feel bigger; like, more personal perhaps? And the commentary is excellent. Focused on the match at hand, getting the guys in the ring over, rather than shilling Cena and whatever jabroni he's going to no-sell for in the main event. It's just a really crisp product.

And HHH is the head booker! How is that possible, given the number of careers he's ruined? Give him his due, he's really good behind the pencil.

[Mr Mystery]

It does seem to be popular, so we may well see it's style filter through into Main Event stuff - strip back the campier side, and get back to the wrasslin'.

Vaudevillains FTW!

Got to say, I only got properly into my WWE about a year ago, with my first PPV at a friend's house. Before that, I'd only seen the highlight shows on Sky, which do not show it at it's best. But ever since that PPV, I've been hooked. The storylines are knowingly daft, and camper than a field full of Frenchmen, but my god, the way those people throw themselves around the ring is truly impressive - all the more so for just how rarely people get properly injured (though a recent spate of injuries to to Good Guys dented the plot somewhat - too many were out of action, leading to obviously hasty re-writes!)

[YorkNecromancer]

Speaking as someone who's been a fan of wrestling for only slightly less time than 40K, I don't think we'll see the NXT old-school style of wrasslin' cross over any time soon. The WWE booking team are too cowed to be creative, and Vince MacMahon won't push anyone less than 6'3" and less than 220 pounds. He likes hosses and little else. Observe the way he's trashed Daniel Bryan since his arrival; Bryan is white-hot over, and they keep jobbing him out, trying to kill his heat.

I think that's why NXT was such a shock; it's wrestling the way it's supposed to be, not the tripe WWE has been calling wrestling with a straight g*****ned face for the last ten years.

Not to mention, Finn Balor's theme music is boss.

[Kirsten]

it just isn't wrestling without Macho Man, Hulk Hogan, and Andre the Giant.

[YorkNecromancer]

I must respectfully disagree. Hulk Hogan's an absolutely despicable individual, and the Macho Man was an unsavoury lunatic. Andre was nice enough, but there was that time his horrible alcoholism led him to poo on another wrestler in the middle of the ring.

http://gawker.com/5950233/hulk-hogan-comes-clean-bubba-the-love-sponge-gave-me-permission-to-do-his-wife
http://thetruthaboutbartending.com/2012/01/26/urban-legend-andre-the-giant-the-greatest-drunk-on-earth/

[Denzark]

What do you mean by booking?

[Kirsten]

I must respectfully disagree. Hulk Hogan's an absolutely despicable individual, and the Macho Man was an unsavoury lunatic. Andre was nice enough, but there was that time his horrible alcoholism led him to poo on another wrestler in the middle of the ring.

http://gawker.com/5950233/hulk-hogan-comes-clean-bubba-the-love-sponge-gave-me-permission-to-do-his-wife
http://thetruthaboutbartending.com/2012/01/26/urban-legend-andre-the-giant-the-greatest-drunk-on-earth/

whether or not they were loons doesn't alter the fact that stuff like Wrestlemania IV was awesome

[YorkNecromancer]

There are two types of wrestling: worked and shoot.

Shoot wrestling is basically the precursor to UFC: real matches that are not fake. They normally involve two men fighting to submission (or in some cases, unconsciousness, usually by choke-out).

Worked wrestling is the kind people think of as 'fake'; in truth, it's anything but. The results are fixed ahead of time, and the highlights of the 'fight' (known as 'spots') are planned, but the impacts are very, very real. Wrestlers break-fall exactly like circus tumblers, but because they do it with significantly more frequency, their bodies wear out in a matter of decades. For example, Hulk Hogan will never wrestle again; he's taken so many impacts, his spine is basically powder held together with duct tape.

That's before you get to things like brain damage caused by multiple concussions sustained over a lifetime in the sport.

Keeping fans ('marks', as in grifter slang for an unsuspecting victim) from knowing that wrestling is a work is referred to as 'keeping kayfabe' or just 'kayfabe', and before Vince MacMahon went public with the truth in the Zahorian steroid scandal of the mid-nineties was SERIOUS BUSINESS amongst wrestlers. However, nowadays, almost every adult wrestling fan is a 'smark' or 'smart mark' - we know it's fake, and we don't care, because we enjoy the display of athletic prowess. I love wrestling the same way I love the 'Matrix' films.

There's a whole art to worked wrestling, and the ability to fight is only the smallest part of it (and much less important than it was back in the 50's when your opponent might decide not to lose (referred to as 'doing the job' or 'jobbing') and shoot on you for real. That sort of stuff would get you fired nowadays, but it still occasionally happens. Noted madman New Jack infamously took a knife to a teenaged wrestler in the 'Mass Transit' incident of the mid-90s's.

To be a good 'worker' (sometimes called a 'ring technician' or 'mechanic') you need strength, stamina, SERIOUS pain endurance (because being a wrestler means living a life in physical pain until the day you die - painkiller addiction is the second most common drug addiction amongst wrestlers after steroids) as well as what's called 'ring psychology' - the ability to judge what moves and reactions will get make a crowd react best. A good crowd reaction is called 'heat' or 'getting heat'; a cheer or boo is a 'pop'; to become popular is called 'getting over'.

There are three kinds of wrestlers in working: faces (good guys), heels (bad guys) and 'tweeners' (as in 'in between'). And they do have distinct goals in the ring, but those goals do not include victory. A face's goal is to get cheers. A heel's goal is to get boos. The reason is simple: people will pay to see a face win, and pay to see a heel lose. Wrestlers who are over, make more money, and a strong face or heel persona is a good way to get over.

Tweeners are very uncommon, and quite problematic; most wrestlers who are tweeners tend to be so because they are highly placed, and want to win when they're heels. Because obviously, heels have to lose a lot of the time. HHH is either a heel or a tweener; he's never really managed to be an effective face.

'Booking' is the fine art of arranging matches; the 'booker' is the person who decides who is going to win and more importantly, why. Wrestling storylines, at best are simple.

The face wants the belt. He fights his way to the top, and loses to the heel. He swears to come back, but the heel cheats to victory. Eventually, after overcoming seemingly impossible odds and the heel's villainous antics, the face is triumphant.

The booker therefore arranges matches best designed to fit into this narrative. Some people have famously tried to reinvent this over the years; the results are inevitably awful. Vince Russo (the self-dubbed 'antichrist of pro-wrestling') is the most infamous example of an idiot booker; his incompetent storylines basically torpedoed WCW, a company which at its peak in 1997 was making $53 million profit. Famous bookers who do it well are Paul Heyman (one of the greatest bookers of all time, but a terrible businessman whose own personal unpleasantness lead to the collapse of his federation, ECW) and Jim Cornette (whose abrasive personality has rendered him persona non grata amongst many of the current luminaries of the field.

In a nutshell, I think wrestling is awesome not in spite of the fact it's fake, but because of that.

For more details:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/BeABooker


whether or not they were loons doesn't alter the fact that stuff like Wrestlemania IV was awesome

Fair point.

TLC 2 at WMX7 though, that was the high point of WM for me...

[Kirsten]

Fair point.

TLC 2 at WMX7 though, that was the high point of WM for me...

The Undertaker was always the high point...

[Mr Mystery]

I can't wait until Seth Rollins gets his comeuppance :p

[Denzark]

Wow cheers Yorkie, I didn't realise it was so involved!

[Mr Mystery]

Yep, what Yorkie said about the appeal.

Plus, the size of the people doing it, you have to respect just how athletic they are. Physically, they're as big as Heavyweight Boxers, yet they fly around that ring like Bantamweights.

And some are frankly insane. Look up some of Mick Foley's fights against the Undertaker. He's been thrown off the top of a cage and onto the announce desk. He's been put through a cage roof onto the mat, thrown through tables and onto drawing pins, and continued the match with pins clearly embedded in his back. And that's all in one match!

Wresltlers put themselves through physical hell, and all in the name of entertainment. It's not surprise many upcoming wrestlers have famous wrestlers in their family.

[Kirsten]

yup, in the Undertaker's last Wrestlemania fight he suffered pretty serious head injuries early on and could barely see straight, yet still carried on the match

[Mr Mystery]

Can totally recommend the WWE network. £9.99 a month, and you get every PPV, plus access to archive editions and that. Really, really good value!

[YorkNecromancer]

Wow cheers Yorkie, I didn't realise it was so involved!

Oh, you're welcome. :) Yeah, it's amazingly involved - I've learned more about crafting an effective narrative through my fifteen years of being a smark than through almost anything else. I think it's because the key tenet of wrestling is so pure:

make the crowd react.

Which is the core of storytelling really. To be a good wrestler, your only goal is to get a reaction. It doesn't matter if they're boos or cheers, so long as the people care. The belts only matter because they're MacGuffins to hang the story on. The greatest wrestlers aren't necessarily the ones with the best physiques, or the best moves (though those definitely help); they're the ones with great ring psychology, able to tell the crowd a story with the match, and let them suspend their disbelief.

If you're interested in watching some wrestling and seeing what it's like, the PPV I've been raving about is called 'NXT TakeOver: Rival', and it's on the WWE network now. It's an excellent starting point, because all but one match is a brilliant example of the art.

Also, I've just found this: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x13ls6t_antonio-cesaro-vs-sami-zayn-nxt-21-08-13-2-out-of-3-falls-match_sport which was definitely the match of the year in 2014.

I'd recommend avoiding WWE's main wrestling programmes, though. They're bloody awful. NXT seems to be the best televised wrasslin at the moment. In the UK, I'm personally a huge fan of GPW. They're based in Wigan, and their events are just great. Been to a few, and I have a friend who wrestles there. Really nice family atmosphere and some very talented guys. (Their Facebook page is here https://www.facebook.com/groups/10244187385/ If you like wrestling and want to see some great British stuff, you could do worse...)


Plus, the size of the people doing it, you have to respect just how athletic they are. Physically, they're as big as Heavyweight Boxers, yet they fly around that ring like Bantamweights.

For me, it's not just that, it's the fact you have to do all that, WHILE ACTING. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WrestlingPsychology) It's amazing improvisational theatre when it's at its best.


And some are frankly insane.

A fed called Combat Zone Wrestling used to run a tournament called (and I kid you not) The Ultraviolent Tournament of Death. Ran for about a decade. It was just disgusting. Weapons included chairs, tables, razor wire, glass bottles, cheese graters, staple guns, neon light tubes, cast iron skillet pans, baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire, C4 plastic explosive and a hedge strimmer. If you Youtube it, you'll see. I'm not posting it because I think that stuff's fairly morally reprehensible, not to mention how talentless it is. If I wanted to see a real fight, I'd watch UFC.


The Undertaker was always the high point...

An astonishing talent. His Hell In A Cell match against Brock Lesnar in 2002 was an absolute tour de force of controlled brutality. The man basically gave match of the year performance after match of the year performance or nearly a decade. A remarkable talent, with a great gimmick.